Season’s greetings to everyone! I hope you are all having a great holiday season, enjoying good food, family, and perhaps some gifts here and there. I have decided that, in the spirit of Christmas, I will air my pet peeves about China so far. Okay, maybe that’s not so much in the spirit of Christmas as it is in the spirit of robbing gifts, ornaments, and stockings from little Cindy Loo Who. But let’s pretend that this year the singing of all the Who’s in Whoville did not prevail upon my heart to grow three sizes larger, and instead I retreated to my mountain lair with my tiny dog-reindeer to make petty complaints about a country I couldn’t possibly understand in three months. Sound good? I thought so.
Complaint the First
I’ve been here for three months and there’s one aspect of living here that has stuck out the entire time: the traffic. Even the first few hours, when I was stuck in a massive typhoon-induced traffic jam, I saw people riding their bikes in the pouring rain in the middle of a highway. I thought it was strange and more than a little dangerous, but I thought maybe that was the only way they could evacuate. Okay, I didn’t really think that because that would still be pretty silly. To be honest, I’m not sure how tons of people aren’t killed every day trying to do this. Of course, there could be some city service that comes by every morning and scrapes flattened people and bicycles off the road. They already have big machines that look like Zambonis (the machines that clean the ice in hockey) that come by and wash the streets at night. The strange thing is that they play music that sounds like the music that ice cream trucks play in the States. I’ve always wondered if some poor kid has heard the music and come running, only to be mauled in some unfortunate Chinese Zamboni accident.
Anyway, back to Chinese traffic. You know how there are distinct, well-known rules of the road that almost everyone follows in America? If you can imagine the complete opposite, you might be close. Basically everyone does exactly what he or she wants to do, from the person on the scooter to the guy driving the dump truck. This probably sounds like the recipe for absolute chaos, and you would be 100% right. If you think watching people ride their bikes in the highway is surreal, try having a car drive straight at you while you’re walking on the sidewalk. You look down to make sure that you haven’t somehow wandered into the road without knowing it. No… no, you are in fact still on the sidewalk. Then the sound of the car honking at you brings you back to reality and you realize that you are going to have to leave the designated walking area because someone wants to drive their car on it. Of course, this will sound less strange when you know that people regularly park their cars on the paved areas in front of buildings. In fact, people park their cars pretty much anywhere they please here.
One of the best ways I can think to describe the traffic here is to say that it’s kind of like that game Frogger, except that the frog has the right of way most of the time. In the States, pedestrians’ rights vary according to the traffic laws of each different state. Here the pedestrian generally has the right of way. I say that it is similar to Frogger because trying to cross the street in China closely resembles that game, except that it’s from a street’s eye view. You might say that it’s nothing like Frogger because the object of the games is not to be smushed and since the pedestrian is nearly untouchable, there seems to be no way you could lose this game. However, it is like the game because you, much like the frog, frequently end up in the middle of a road with cars whizzing past you. How does this happen? Well, as I said, the big bargaining chip you have when dealing with cars is that the cars will do almost anything on the road except hit a person. So, the basic strategy to crossing the street is to keep moving out further and further without giving up any ground. And, even though the cars will generally avoid hitting you, this does not mean they’ll slow down. In fact, the standard procedure is to speed up so as to get in front of the car in the lane next to them, then change lanes and go around you. Basically, the way pedestrians and drivers behave here is the exact opposite of the way one would behave on the road in the US. People walk into the middle of the road in front of cars because they know the cars won’t hit them and the drivers speed up when they see a slow-moving or stopped object in the road so that they can get around them more quickly.
Keeping these things in mind, you have to put your prior experience and every instinct for self-preservation aside, and just step out into the road. At the halfway point of crossing, you often find yourself in a gap in the little plastic dividing fence that sits on the double yellow line. I can say with certainty that these fences exist for the sole purpose of keeping cars from crossing into oncoming traffic to pass cars on their side of the road. I know this because I have been in numerous taxicabs when they have taken advantage of the lack of a fence to do this. If there is no fence, you end up standing on the two double lines in the middle of the road, hoping that no one will cross it at the moment you happen to be standing on it. Of course one of the best tactics for getting across is to walk to one side of someone crossing the road on a scooter. I’ve seen car-on-car accidents and scooter-on-scooter accidents so far, but no car-on-scooter accidents. They make very effective shields.
There are a couple of other things that you will need to remember when crossing the street. One of them is that cars will generally barrel around a corner when they have a green turn signal instead of yielding to pedestrians who have a green walk signal at the same time or even slowing down to account for the presence of pedestrians at all. I’ve been involved in some intense games of chicken when crossing the street like this, but I’ve won every time so far. Why have I been driven to these lengths when it would seem that anyone with common sense would know not to challenge a car in this sort of situation? Well, first of all, if you know me, then you know that I possess a significantly smaller amount of common sense than the average person to begin with. But mainly, it’s because of the honking. The honking here is absolutely atrocious. People honk when they want to change lanes, they honk if the first car isn’t already in motion when the light turns green, they honk whenever someone is trying to do something stupid on the road (which is pretty much constantly), they honk if they even suspect that someone is thinking of crossing the street, and they honk if they don’t like the shoes you’re wearing. Well, I’m not sure about that last one, but it’s certainly possible. But the worst is that the drivers here honk whenever you happen to be walking within sight of them. It can be perfectly clear that you’re aware of their presence and are not anywhere near them, but they’ll still honk at you anyway, as if they fully expect you to dive in front of their grill at any moment. This happens to me almost every time I enter or leave the grounds of my apartment complex. Some car comes up behind me and honks at me even though it has plenty of room and I’m standing there looking at it so the driver doesn’t feel compelled to remind me of his presence. For this and other honking-related offenses, I have declared war on the cars and drivers in Wuxi. I have limited this war to the cars because the scooters don’t pose as much of a threat as cars and because the other type of vehicle on the road represents a nearly unstoppable force: the buses. The one thing that you must remember at all times when walking near the street is that the buses will not stop for you. They don’t stop for anyone and the drivers don’t take kindly to delays of any kind. If you are even a fraction of a second too late trying to catch a bus here, you can forget it. They even honk at police cars with impunity. These things are merciless.
You would think that such a system would produce fatalities, but I haven’t seen any really bad accidents. The most likely reason for this is that at times, traffic can get so congested that it’s nearly impossible to build up any speed. It’s not unusual for me to be the fastest-moving object on the road or sidewalk. Often the cars can’t go anywhere and I’m pretty sure that I have about twice as much motive power as most of the scooters here. Sometimes I feel like some sort of frowning missile as I dodge pedestrians, stray animals, street vendors, and the ever-present gobs of spit on the sidewalk at high speed. I always disliked walking in crowds and malls (I’ll devote a whole post to shopping at some point) back in the States, so I knew it would be bad in China. But it’s really not so bad once you get used to it and you learn to avoid certain things and situations, like knowing that every person over the age of 40 will inevitably veer into your path as you’re walking. I’m not sure how it happened, but there must be something written into the genetic code of the people here that doesn’t get triggered until they hit 40. After that, it appears to be scientifically impossible for them to walk in a straight line. However, armed with this knowledge, you can make a move in advance and successfully avoid a collision. I think I’ve learned most of the tricks I need to be able to maneuver on the streets here. And when it gets really bad, and here I mean a traffic jam of such epic proportions that not even the people stuck in it can move, I have the ability to physically remove most of the objects in my path. This has only happened once and I needed to move several scooters and shoulder past countless people and vehicles before I could burst out of the blocked roadway. But I escaped to tell the tale.
You might ask how I learned to use these physical methods and how I don’t think it’s rude to act this way. Well, I learned them by dealing with my next pet peeve:
Cutting in Line
To be continued…
